EFT Tapping Therapy and Free Emotional Freedom Techniques

Nathaniel Brandon, PhDauthor of The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem"The techniques of EP have provided me with invaluable tools for working with trauma. No therapist can afford to remain ignorant of this new and exciting field."

Battling a Giant with Really Small, Surprisingly Effective Rocks

Dear EFT Community,

This hilarious account of overcoming depression is one of the most fun case histories I have read. Kari Reed is a client of long-time EFT practitioner Karin Davidson, co-author of the EFT Level Training Resource Books for EFT Universe. You can order the EFT Level 1 or 2 coursebooks on Amazon.com.

-Dawson Church

By Kari Reed

Tapping is the stupidest thing you’ll ever do.

I realize that I just potentially offended an entire, ever-growing community of people, but it’s true. Tapping is probably the stupidest thing you’ll ever do. Think about it – there are “special places” all over your face and body and if you bang on these enough, while saying some words and imagining some stuff all your problems will go away.

To make it even more ridiculous, you can imagine banging on the face of an imaginary younger version of yourself and your problems will go away even faster. And let’s face it, you know that when you’re sitting there, eyes closed, trying to picture your inner 4-year-old, touching your face like a crazy person with a nervous tic, and mumbling that you truly and deeply love and accept yourself anyway – you probably look pretty stupid.

In fact, we can go ahead and remove the “probably” – you look stupid.

The problem with this stupid thing is that it actually works.

That isn’t to say that it feels any less silly or ridiculous while you’re doing it, and that isn’t to say that you’ll suddenly stop feeling the urge to sigh and roll your eyes every time your practitioner asks you to “ask your little self how they feel,” and it certainly doesn’t mean that all of your issues, problems, and troubles will disappear in a cloud of magic, tapping-dust tomorrow, but it is to say that you will be involved in a process that will help you to slowly, but surely, move forward once and for all.

And what’s even better is that you will start to feel a difference, see changes in yourself and various parts of your life, and you will get better – it just takes some time and a whole lot of looking stupid.

Everyone who taps gets to go through the “this is so stupid, I can’t believe I’m doing this, this thing can’t possibly actually work” phase – and for some it’s longer than others – but for those dealing with heavy and complex issues like depression, the experience is a little more complicated.

You see, depression isn’t something that happens over night – and I speak from experience.

Depression is something that creeps in slowly, almost elusively, like putting ink in a jar of water. It creeps. It blurs reality. It affects everything. And when it finally settles, everything seems a little darker – actually, it all seems a lot darker.

And you find yourself looking around at all the inky, cloudy water – complete with black ink-sludge on the bottom – and you think, “Holy !!##&*@. There’s no way I can clean this up. I don’t even have the energy to think about where to begin, I think I’ll just sleep instead. This is utterly and terribly hopeless.”

So you sit inside of your little, inky jar, feeling depressed, and sad, and hopeless, and unmotivated, and wishing things weren’t like this and having no idea if you’ll have to live like this forever.

Meds might help. Talking to someone might help. Seeing a therapist might help. All of these things help you cope with and rationalize the situation, but none of them make the darkness – the depression – go away.

Enter tapping (cue glorious music from the sky, a video montage of clouds opening, and maybe even the voice of Morgan Freeman!). Tapping is supposed to be able to help!

There’s a success rate and testimonials from other people who couldn’t get out of their inky, water-filled jars and got better from doing this stupid thing, and suddenly, even though you can hardly believe it (even though you’re terrified to believe it because what if it doesn’t work on you?!) there’s some hope.

A glimmer through the muck and mire.

And so you resolve yourself, as difficult as resolve feels most of the time, that you’re going to try it. You read all of the success stories and watch all of the near-miraculous videos and You Tube clips and talk to as many people as you can and when you finally try this miraculous, godsend of a cure, your realize how stupid it feels, how you don’t really wanna talk to any *#%! younger version of yourself, let alone bang on their faces, you don’t feel like doing work on your own in-between sessions even though your practitioner highly recommends it, and my god it’s taking so long why is it taking so long??

It can be defeated. Again, I speak from experience.

Think of tapping like this (I really like metaphors): Tapping is like fighting giants with stones. Some giants are bigger than others (depression is huge, a spider phobia? Not so huge), and some stones are bigger than others.

At first, it’s totally natural to look at the pile of stones that you have and think, “There is no way in #@!! these will ever take down that whole giant,” but you lob one at him anyway, just because, well, you’ve tried everything else and you may as well cross this stupid tapping stuff off your list too.

The stone you threw (not very zealously, I might add, because you were too busy being skeptical and convincing yourself that it wouldn’t work anyway), hits the giant’s little finger. Not exactly deadly, but to your surprise, his little pinky finger disintegrates.

Poof. Gone. Just like that.

You stare at the space where his finger once was in shock. It worked!

These stones may seem small compared to the giant, but they’re surprisingly effective. It’s easy to get hung up on how huge the giant seems – your depression giant is a big one – he’s been binging on chocolate and carbs to make himself feel better and spending most of his days laying in bed – but if you keep lobbing stones, knowing that if you just hit him again, another piece of him will disintegrate, and then another, and another, and so on.

If you feel motivated to tap on your own and you throw some extra stones, great! But if not, it really doesn’t matter. As long as you keep going in some fashion, the giant will slowly, but surely, break down, until there’s nothing left but a foot, maybe an ear, and you’ll think, “Hey. I can live with that!” and it’ll be over and you’ll be moving on with the rest of your life before you know it.

It takes time. And you’ll feel stupid. And it’ll feel so long and ridiculous and impossible.

But when the giant’s gone, all the stupid rock throwing will have been totally worth it.

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